Prehistoric Park: Theo & Theodora
by bhut
Summary: Theo the Triceratops is feeling lonely, so Nigel goes to the Cretaceous to bring him a girlfriend. Will he succeed? And what is Matilda the T-Rex up to?


**Prehistoric Park: Theo & Theodora**

_Disclaimer: none of the characters are mine, but belong to Impossible Pictures™._

It is yet another morning in the Prehistoric Park, and everything appeared to be running smoothly for a change. The Ornitholestes flock, now teenagers rather hatchlings, have largely shed their downy fur and have began to look more like their parents. The Smilodon cubs too have began to shed their milk teeth and to grow their adult dentition; including their infamous sabers – but for now they were still cute and cuddly, cheerfully using their impromptu scratching post in a corner of Susanne's vet office.

"So far," Bob the groundskeeper was telling Nigel, "everything is going on smoothly-" a titanosaur rumbled from high over head, as it defoliated a particularly appetizing tree – "except for the Troodon, I suppose. He's a cheeky little bugger and so far we haven't yet got time or appropriate resources to build him an enclosure of his own, so for now he's sharing one with the terror bird, and neither is particularly happy about it."

And indeed, the Troodon and the terror bird were mutually glaring through a fence with a deep suspicion regarding each other, until a titanosaur rumbled past, making the ground move and the smaller critters scurry for the relative safety, creating an impromptu truce, at least for a while.

"Well, I'm sure that you'll think of something, Bob," Nigel said brightly, as he usually did, causing Bob to glare back, as _he_ usually did. "Anyways, speaking of enclosures!"

A sound that was both hoarse and loud, but not belonging to a titanosaur, echoed through Prehistoric Park, time after time. "And then we got this fellow," Bob said in a gentler tone, pointing his thumb up the Triceratops hill, where the park's resident Triceratops, Theo, was currently enclosed. "He's done it last time too, remember, when we first got him?"

Nigel did remember that time: when Theo first came to Prehistoric Park, he was still a teenager, but already ready to mate and to claim a territory of his own, as the red crest on his neck and shoulders could testify. In the wild, he would probably be beaten by an older male; here, in the park, Bob and Nigel rigged up a rival for the Triceratops by outfitting a tractor with truck tired and a pair of impromptu horns – a trick that allowed Theo to express his frustrations for a long enough period of time for the Triceratops to calm down and to declare himself the winner of the neighbourhood.

Now it appeared that this time has come again, as Theo once again scratched himself against the dead trees in his enclosure and bashed his horned head against the fence. Covering, he was also rubbing against the trees and the fence, emitting a smell that was pungent, to say the least.

"Whew! That's new!" Nigel said in a nasal tone of voice as he pinched his nose and looked at Bob in understanding. "Looks like Theo have become even more mature and ready to mate!"

"True, true," Bob replied with an equally pinched nose. "I thought that he got bigger since he first got here – maybe we can get Susanne to tranquilize and to measure him-" another titanosaur passing by caused the two humans to dodge it – "what do you think?"

"Good idea, go for it," Nigel said brightly. "While I, meanwhile, will go back to the Cretaceous with my crew to see if we can capture another Triceratops, a female, for Theo to make with."

Bob just sighed, but agreed.

/

Susanne met Bob's idea with mixed emotions: "I'm all for it," she told the gruff Scotsman, "but what about the cubs? They have become more independent, but still prefer to stick closer to me."

"Eh, let them come," Bob said unanimously. "Theo is out of the way from the rest of the dinosaurs – too uphill for them to like, you see – so the little mites won't get into trouble."

"All right," Susanne said somewhat dubiously: the cubs' claws were already long enough to leave 3 cm deep gouges in their scratching post, so Bob's statement was just asking to be jinxed. "Where's Nigel, though?"

"In the Cretaceous."

/

The Cretaceous greeted Nigel and his crew with a soft green scrubland of cycads and palmettos – small trees, especially by the dinosaur standards. "Right now," Nigel told his team, "we're approximately 66 million of years in the past, still millennia away from the meteorite, and the dinosaurs are everywhere!"

And indeed they were: the duckbilled hadrosaurs, fleet-footed bird mimic dinosaurs, and the horned ceratopsians, or more precisely, the Triceratops. "This," Nigel continued to explain, as the plant-eaters continued with their business ignoring the humans in the distance, "is the last heyday of the dinosaurs: they may be bigger and more colorful than before – see the multicolored crests of the Triceratops and the necks and napes of the hadrosaurs – but they are also the last of their kind. As we have experienced in our very first trip here, when we got Terrence and Matilda, the terrible T-Rex twins, sometime in the future a giant stone from space will come and erase all of the dinosaurs from the face of the planet, leaving only birds as their legacy. That said, I plan on saving at least one more local dinosaur from such a terrible fate..."

"Nigel, what's that smell?" one of the crewmembers yelled off camera.

"Hmm," Nigel took a deep sniff of his own. "Ah, this is one of the more familiar smells to a field biologist – rotting meat. I seriously hope that one of Terrence and Matilda's wild cousins is not around – the twins already are a handful and I confess that I have doubts that we should breed them..."

Nigel did not finish as a large, winged shadow flew overhead in the direction from where the stench came. "This is a pterosaur, one of the famous winged reptiles of the Mesozoic! They also became extinct when the meteorite came, just as the dinosaurs did, and just as the dinosaurs, just before the meteorite came, was the time when they were at their most prominent. I know that we came here for a Triceratops, but there's no immediate rush, so let's follow this flying reptile and see where it goes."

And Nigel went off, followed closely by his assistants, as it was obvious that the pterosaur was going for a landing...

/

Back in Prehistoric Park, Theo the Triceratops continued to be something of a nuisance, as he wandered around his enclosure, snorting and spitting and stomping his feet, looking around from underneath his massive brow horns and sniffing the air, seeking something.

Or rather someone, as Susanne the vet explained to the others. "I do believe that he is looking for mates, poor thing," she said gently. "According to Nigel, in the wild Triceratops are very social animals, and as such they probably become very sexually active during the mating season. Theo has won this patch for his own and is seeking females to attract to it. Unless he can get any, he will grow despondent and go seeking them elsewhere, and this can be a disaster. He is smaller than the titanosaurs, but is relatively smarter than they are, relatively better armed, and probably more aggressive. We may have to tranquilize him if he cannot be brought to heel – Bob, what are you doing?"

"Bringing back Theo's old friend the tractor," the groundskeeper replied gruffly. "Maybe with it around as a prop we can help the poor blighter get over whatever's bugging him without reverting the tranquilizer guns, you know?"

It was then that the Smilodon cubs decided to liven things up. This was their first true outing into Prehistoric Park, and listening to Theo the Triceratops emit loud cries made them think that this was a game for some reason. So, they reared up on their hind legs and emitted roars of their own – well, at this age in their eyes it was more like some really loud yowling instead.

Admittedly, this was not the only sound made by animals at this moment in Prehistoric Park, from further down the hill there was the roaring of one of the T-Rex twins and the rumbles of the titanosaurs as they talked to each other. Sadly, it was the sound that Theo the Triceratops heard and responded by charging at the fence: it shook and some of the boards cracked, but it held.

"Bob, please hurry," Susanne said slowly as the two cubs hid behind her, clearly frightened, but still hissing in anger. "This situation is going nowhere good fast."

/

"At last we have arrived!" Nigel declared brightly as he and the others looked into a small clearing from behind some woodland cover. There lay another duck-billed hadrosaur, or rather its remains, killed and partially eaten by some large predator, most likely a T-Rex.

"The hadrosaur dinosaurs, such as the Edmontosaurus that we see grazing around here, are really the cows of the Cretaceous," Nigel was explaining. "Tyrannosaurs and any other predators, like the big crocodilians, often go for them, because they have no horns or tail clubs or similar protection; when confronted by a carnivore, they can only run away. However, the pterosaur that we're currently observing isn't that sort of a carnivore; rather, it is a scavenger that feeds on the remains of kills of other carnivores, including, yes, the T-Rex."

A loud roar shook the neighbourhood, causing Nigel and his crewmembers to look to their left. Sure enough, the rightful owner of the kill, a tyrannosaur roughly the size of Terrence and Matilda was coming towards the winged thief, and the pterosaur took away flying at a single leap: clearly, unlike popular assumptions, a pterosaur isn't quite a fish out of water on land as everyone believes and can move fast enough to get into air and escape from a tyrannosaur at least.

Seeing its prey get away, the tyrannosaur returned to the carcass, but there was little remaining of it, so after several sniffs it turned away and began to move back towards the open ground, clearly intent on catching a new meal for itself.

Silently, Nigel indicated for his people to follow.

/

Back at Prehistoric Park, a T-Rex was also having a back day. Terrence the male T-Rex, being the more submissive of the two was usually staying out of trouble especially now that his sister was not around to fight him, but Matilda... she was actually the problem. Just like among the carnivorous birds, in the carnivorous species of dinosaurs the females were the deadlier gender, and it showed, as Matilda was larger and more aggressive than her brother was as well.

In addition, today she was actually moodier even than the usual, walking around her enclosure, sniffing the air keeping one ear cocked up as well (though due to the lack of external ears one could not actually see her doing this). As the day went on, Theo the Triceratops continued to yell his threats and love messages, and the titanosaurs continued to wander around the park, Matilda felt something stir inside her: it was hunger. True, she had eaten less than a day ago, but as far as domestic dinosaurs went, Matilda was still wild enough... and she really disliked being enclosed as she often did, so she went forwards toward the front fence to see if she could not break through.

It was then that several things happened. First, the Deinosuchus, who had once more surfaced for air had enough and added her own bellowing roar to the increasing cacophony. And second, groundskeeper Bob was driving past her enclosure in his customized tractor. For some reason, this proved to be the last straw: Matilda snarled loudly and charged at the fence. It was reinforced, of course, but by now Matilda was an almost fully-grown T-Rex, and when she slammed with her entire strength and weight into the obstacle, the logs of the fence did give way...with a lot of noise, more than enough to warn Bob that something was amiss, and the chase was on.

/

A tyrannosaur's hunting strategy, whether it hunted in a pack, as on Nigel's previous visit, or on its own, as it did now, included making a lot of noise and charging from behind some cover. Here and now this plan was made easier by the fact that the local woodland was quite dense, enough to hide even one of Earth's biggest predators... until the T-Rex charged.

The Triceratops herd reacted in a way not unlike the last time Nigel saw them deal with a tyrannosaur attack: it formed a defensive wall made out of horns and frills, protecting the more vulnerable juveniles and youngsters. However, just like before, some of the latter were frightened and fled away from their main herd – and that was just the chance Nigel was waiting for:

"This one," he pointed to one of the Triceratops with a smaller and more modest crest than the one on the nape and neck of Theo. "Get ready to establish the time portal."

The tyrannosaur, which until then had been chasing another juvenile Triceratops with a varied amount of success, suddenly stopped.

Sadly, Nigel and his crew failed to notice that, as they established their time portal just before the Triceratops.

The tyrannosaur just stood there for several moments making some sort of mental calculations, and then it charged at that same Triceratops. The latter was already horned and frilled, but not fully, and thus it decided to flee instead, straight into the time portal.

And the tyrannosaur followed.

/

Back at Prehistoric Park things were getting out of hand as well, as Bob suddenly found himself surrounded by many, many tons of titanosaur flesh. True, there was also one T-Rex, Matilda, who had chased Bob and his tractor into the middle of the titanosaur herd and the titanosaurs did not like it.

Last time, when Bob had driven into the middle of their herd, the titanosaurs tried to flee and stampeded, practically breaking down every enclosure in Prehistoric Park. On this occasion they apparently were leaning towards a fight, slowly but steadily surrounding Matilda, stamping their feet into the ground to drive their point further. Pound for pound, even a single angry titanosaur was a match for Matilda (and maybe even more so), and this was an entire herd of these giant long-necked sauropods. Matilda was outmatched and she knew it. She was also retreating, but rather slower than how the titanosaurs would have liked, and so they were slowly moving forwards as well, ready to charge.

Bob, for his part, was reduced to mostly manoeuvring his truck beneath the titans' feet, trying his best not to get smashed himself, seeing how the titanosaurs ignored him, or rather the truck, as too little and insignificant to be bothered with. Sadly, that also meant that they were not watching as to where they put their feet, so they still could smash Bob and the truck on accident..., which was not exactly an improvement over being smashed on purpose.

And then something happened: Bob's radio came to life. "Bob? Where are you? We've got a situation here," Susanne's voice came from it before being cut with a loud crash – loud enough to stop the titanosaurs in their tracks and to start looking around for the source of sound. That, in turn, gave Matilda enough opportunity to cut her losses and flee, supposedly back to her enclosure.

"Susanne? What is going on there?" Bob yelled into his radio. There was no reply, but soon the mystery became evident, as Theo the Triceratops had raced past him, making all sorts of sounds and clearly not tranquilized in any way or fashion. He also frightened the titanosaurs even more, so they began to flee (though rather slowly) in all directions, creating something of a stampede, just as they did on the day when the Deinosuchus came to the park.

"And today was shaping to be rather nice, actually," Bob sighed. His radio chose this moment to come online, though:

"Bob? It is Nigel. What's going on?"

/

Nigel, meanwhile, was having his own problems. Sure, he was able to bring back the juvenile Triceratops and his crew without losing anyone in the latest Triceratops-T-Rex hunt, but they have also acquired an extra T-Rex as well.

To make matters more confusing, the sounds that came from the rest of the park resembled those of the last massive breakout, and with a new, untranquilized and rather hungry T-Rex on his hands, Nigel could really use some help – and it arrived.

In the character of Theo the Triceratops. The horned dinosaur literally burst through the gate and almost snarled at the predator, stomping his feet and swinging his horned head. The T-Rex, for his part, took one good look (and a good sniff too) and fled from the herbivore.

Normally, Nigel would have followed the tyrannosaur, but for now Theo was in the center of everyone's attention as he made a strange little dance around the other Triceratops, shaking his entire body, making odd snorting sounds and generally prancing around, doing his best to show-off his now flamboyant crest and long brow horns. The other Triceratops looked rather appreciative, dancing around Theo as well, shaking her own crested head and poking Theo with the nasal horn in an affectional way.

As Nigel turned away to turn off the park's time portal, he, for one, could hear the grunts of the two Triceratops' hit a new high as Theo's courting proved to be successful all the way.

/

"Nice to see that someone's day ended well," Susanne the vet said dryly as Theo brought his new girlfriend to his old pad and the two dinosaurs were browsing on the local foliage to their hearts' content. "What will we call her, I wonder?"

"Susanne, I'm glad to see that you're all right, and so's Bob," Nigel replied instead. "What has happened, though?"

"Basically? While we were watching Theo, the cubs got their paws on the tranquilizer gun and managed to break the trigger system somehow. Considering that they are already quite strong and their claws are sharp... I am actually somewhat happy that nothing else was destroyed. So what are we calling her?"

"Theodora, for simplicity's sake," Nigel shrugged. "Got to admit, I think that we're forgetting something."

"Hey, Nigel!" came a cry from one of the park's workers. "There's a new T-Rex in Terrence's pen and they're getting along."

Wordlessly, Nigel, Bob and Susannah just looked at each other: perhaps the park's tyrannosaurs will get a chance to breed after all.

End


End file.
